Sandra Tzschaschel from Hessischer Rundfunk interviews private detective Holger E. in the office of Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt about his encounter with the Hanau attacker, Tobias Rathjen, in October 2019 in Dortmund. Below is the video and beneath it the transcript.

“Tobias R. Wanted to Hire Detective Agency”

Article on hessenschau.de

The suspected perpetrator Tobias R. apparently contacted the Wuppertal branch of Kurtz Investigations in June 2019. He wished to commission the agency to establish contacts with the BND, intelligence services and the Federal Chancellor. Agency owner Patrick Kurtz told the hr that an investigator had met Tobias R. in Dortmund in October 2019. However, no assignment was agreed because the man apparently suffered from paranoid delusions. In a sector that also deals with counter-surveillance and debugging, the man was not an isolated case. “Every day people call who suffer from paranoid delusions.” He had not expressed xenophobic views.

 

That morning, Attorney General Peter Frank had already confirmed that the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office had been in contact with the suspected Hanau attacker in the previous November. At that time, a criminal complaint filed by the man had been received by the authority. In it, he had reported an unknown intelligence organisation to the police.

“Hanau Perpetrator Contacted Detective Agency” – hessenschau

Sandra Tzschaschel: “Tobias R., the suspected perpetrator from Hanau, radicalised himself on the internet. Alone, without a right-wing extremist network. That is the view of the authorities. He is considered a withdrawn person. But long before his attack, Tobias R. sought contact, sought proof for his delusions, and turned to a detective agency last year. In October there was even a personal meeting in Düsseldorf. What he wanted is described to me today by Holger E. and his manager during a conversation in Frankfurt.”

 

Private detective “Holger E.”: “He needed from us our staff, BND or MAD, or best of all even the Office for the Protection of the Constitution or ideally Mrs Merkel. We were supposed to enable contact for him and were supposed to give him telephone numbers. He immediately began telling me his life story from early childhood. And he also read passages from this ‘manifesto’ to me.”

Tobias Rathjen contacted the Authorities independently

Sandra Tzschaschel: “Tobias R. also turned to the Federal Public Prosecutor in Karlsruhe because of his fear of a secret organisation, and not only there did he seek attention.”

 

Holger Schmidt, terrorism expert: “My impression is that he also contacted public prosecutors’ offices at the state level and, in my view, also engaged in extensive correspondence with authorities in Hesse. My impression is that he discussed the matters troubling him – namely that there was a persecution, a power, something strange pursuing him – with numerous authorities.”

Still No Nationwide Firearms Register

Sandra Tzschaschel: “What did not raise concern: Tobias R. possessed firearms. Legally. Two were registered on his firearms possession card, issued in 2013 by the responsible district authority – to a 43-year-old man with delusions. A nationwide firearms register does not exist.”

 

Holger Schmidt: “The question of who receives a firearm, who may carry it and what rights are attached to it, such as firearms licence or firearms possession card, is a matter for the federal states or the municipalities. As far as I can tell, there is currently no possibility to query this centrally; it is always a matter for the involved regional authorities. Whether it can remain that way is now, of course, the question.”

Authorities’ Information System No Longer Up to Date

Sandra Tzschaschel: “Tobias R. kept his intentions to kill and commit terrorism to himself. He made no hint whatsoever, not even to the detectives.”

 

Private detective “Holger E.”: “He did not give me the impression of being a threat. And I am a security consultant; I also have a certain sense for people who might become dangerous.”

 

Sandra Tzschaschel: “Tobias R. shot ten people, and the detectives ask themselves why no one took his weapons away in time.”

 

Private detective “Holger E.”: “It is all poorly organised here with the police, simply because it is not done centrally. The officer sitting at the front desk in a police station should, with a few clicks and the name and date of birth, immediately see: What sort of person is this?”

 

Sandra Tzschaschel: “The conversation back then lasted two and a half hours. The detectives offered their further support. However, Tobias R. broke off contact with them. Four months before his terrorist attack in Hanau.”

Correction

The meeting between our Unna-based detective Holger E. and Tobias Rathjen did not take place in Düsseldorf, but in the Landhaus Dieckmanns in Dortmund.

Our condolences go out to the victims and their families.

Kurtz Detective Agency Frankfurt

c/o AT Büro Center

Mainzer Landstraße 341

60326 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Tel.: +49 69 1201 8431

E-Mail: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-frankfurt.de

Web: https://www.kurtz-detektei-frankfurt.de/en

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